Human Flower Project

‘Mr. Bromeliad’ Heads for Singapore

A famous Florida botanical garden is losing its proud research scientists, as the institution trims the budget and juggles multiple goals.

A bromeliad at Selby Gardens, which has the largest collection in the world

Photo: dotpolka

Thanks to Holly Chase for alerting us to the tumult at Selby Botanical Gardens. Selby, in Sarasota, Florida, has been world renowned for its study and collection of epiphytes – principally orchids and bromeliads.

Here grows “the most diverse collection of bromeliads in the world… over 20,000 plants from some 6000 species in 1200 genera from 214 plant families, including 6,000 live orchids. More than 150 expeditions to the tropics and subtropics have contributed to these collections.”

Recently, two of the garden’s orchid experts were dismissed, and now “Mr. Bromeliad” Harry Luther is leaving to take a position in Singapore. “It comes down to cash,” Selby’s CEO Thomas Buchter told the Herald-Tribune. Ah, yes. It comes down to that, but in the case of this 35-year-old institution, it may keep on rolling downhill, at least insofar as Selby’s reputation and community relations go.

Selby Gardens is a popular, and beautiful, place for Sarasota weddings

Photo: Audrey Snow Photography

These are hard times for just about all non-profits (for profits too), but botanical gardens are embattled in the inside, by divided loyalties. How is it possible to maintain venerable plant collections and pursue botanical science, meanwhile entertaining the public, providing park space, and continuing to attract donations? The Selby Gardens also owns some choice real estate, and multiple designs for the future of that land seem to have been part of the institution’s problems. For lots more on the ins, outs, ups and downs of Selby’s recent history, read this account from Creative Loafing.

Selby Botanical Gardens researcher Jeanne Katzenstein with part of the gesneriad specimen collection, 2007

Photo: Peter Shalit

It could be that botanical gardens are confronting the same hard bargain that has faced many public universities: whether to persist in the slow, sometimes esoteric and often expensive work of disinterested research or to turn outward, go for wider public support and visibility via programming, and seek corporate sponsorship.

We all know which way the universities turned on that one. It seems Selby is shifting with the same wind.

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